Friday

Feb 24, 2017 at 11:00 AMFeb 24, 2017 at 5:01 PM

FALL RIVER — Kyle Moniz said he remembers sleeping on the cold ground against a stone wall at Ruggles Park when he became homeless at 16 years old.

He said he tried to warm up in convenience stores but got kicked out, and sometimes slept on friends’ couches until they asked him to leave, too. He said his mother moved away and left no contact information.

“I got kicked out of every place I’ve been,” Moniz said.

When it got real cold, Moniz said he did some things, criminal things, to get himself arrested “just to get locked up” where it was warm. “I was desperate. I had to survive.”

He said he was living the “hood life” and using drugs, mainly heroin. “That’s what it’s all been about.”

Moniz, 20 now, said he was 12 when he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, a serious mental condition that can affect how a person thinks, feels and relates to others. It can distort what is real and what is imaginary.

Moniz said he dropped out of school in the sixth grade and has a “very bad” history of violence.

“Being homeless is just so much worse than people think,” Moniz said.

But, things seem better these days.

Moniz said he currently lives in a group home, is on medication for his condition, has developed a relationship with his mother, and said he wants nothing to do with drugs.

He even received his high school diploma.

Moniz, a member of Fellowship Health Resources’ Town House Clubhouse, told his story in the presence of Program Director Paul Baker at the President Avenue facility where Moniz often spends his days.

Townhouse Club House supports people in recovery from mental illness and helps them learn life skills, find jobs, and housing.

Mental illness and the homeless

Moniz is one of many people who suffers from mental illness, a path that so often leads to substance abuse, homelessness, overdose, crime, and sometimes even suicide.

“The third largest cause of homelessness is mental illness,” Baker said.

Drugs are a big part of that.

Baker said “people try to self-medicate,” which often leads them to addiction. Soon, they are unable to care for themselves or their household, pay rent and bills, or even maintain relationships.

Some 20 to 25 percent of the homeless population in the United States suffers from some form of mental illness, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless in a 2009 report, its most current available.

Nancy Lawson, Emergency Solutions coordinator for Catholic Social Services, said there are a number of “complex” issues that feed into homelessness. “Mental illness and substance abuse is really the catalyst.”

There are problems in the overburdened system too, like a waiting list for available slots for detox, a limited number of beds in shelters, a shortage of psychiatrists, and a lack of affordable housing.

“It’s a lot of issues,” Lawson said. “It’s one at a time. It’s not a cookie cutter story.”

In January of this year, The Call at 1-800-Homeless, a triage system for those about to be homeless or who are already homeless, received 195 at-risk calls and 22 homeless calls in Fall River.

At-risk callers are about to lose their residence, Lawson explained. In all of Bristol County, there were 731 calls and 1,237 people served.

Lawson said people get evicted every day. She tries to help them keep their apartment, whether that means working it out with the landlord, maintaining their rental voucher, or suggesting a roommate to share expenses.

She said it’s a daily struggle for agencies to help all callers and get them the right services.

“The good part about Bristol County is the conversations are in progress,” Lawson said. “The fact that that’s happening is a success.”

First line of treatment

Police are sometimes first to recognize that a person has a mental illness and is in need of help, whether that be through a citizen phone call or an officer seeing someone exhibiting certain behaviors.

They may seem unaware of their surroundings, or not making rational statements. Some may say they want to harm themselves or others.

Fall River Police Capt. Wayne Furtado said his officers are “encountering it on a daily basis.”

Police are trained on how to approach someone who may be suffering from a mental disorder, how to speak to them, and can file a section 12 and get them the medical care they need.

He said sometimes a person may feel that police are not on their side and are trying to “put them away. That’s where the training comes in.”

Police Capt. Joseph Cabral, a liaison between police and social service agencies in the city, said the number of calls for mental health issues has gone up in recent years, from 809 in 2012 to 1,212 in 2016.

“I think the city is doing all it can,” Cabral said. “The city is very fortunate to have so many social service agencies. There’s a lot of people out there doing good work.”

He said if the city can reduce its drug use, many other social ills, like crime and homelessness would also decrease.

“It’s real sad,” Cabral said. “These people are human.”

Decades of drug use

Kenny, 56, who would only supply a first name, said he’s “built up” his life only to destroy it over and over again.

He’s been “abusing” drugs and alcohol for 40 years. It’s about his fifth try at getting sober.

“I’ve been homeless a number of times,” Kenny said. “It was awful. It’s ugly.”

Kenny was on his last day at a men’s step-down program at Stanley Street Treatment and Resources and had been sober for six weeks when he spoke to The Herald News.

He said he was on a waiting list to get into a half-way house, but because it was full, he was going to stay with friends.

“If I didn’t have friends, I’d be on the street,” Kenny said. “I wouldn’t give myself much of a chance being out there.”

Kenny’s problems started with feelings of depression and anxiety. He said he had problems as a kid raised by a single mother and “acting out,” which escalated into drug and alcohol use when he got older.

“I lost my will to live,” Kenny said. “I lost my soul.”

He went to prison several times, for a total of about 15 years, all for crimes associated with drugs.

Between those stints, Kenny has tried to get sober, and succeeded, once for five years, once for three years, and a “year here and there,” he said, only to relapse again.

More than once, he’s threatened suicide just to get into a treatment program when no beds were available.

“I don’t have suicidal thoughts,” Kenny said. “That’s what you have to do to get into treatment.”

Mental health disparity

Patients in need of emergency mental health care in Massachusetts wait four times longer for an inpatient bed and five times longer for a transfer to another facility than those suffering from medical conditions, according to a study in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.

Dr. Mark Pearlmutter, lead study author and chairman of the Academic Department of Emergency Medicine at Tufts University School in Boston, said in his paper that “boarding” patients in emergency rooms in need of mental health services is a “pervasive public health problem that disproportionately affects mental health patients.”

For patients admitted to the hospital from the emergency room, the average length of stay was 4.2 hours for medical/surgical patients and 16.5 hours for mental health patients. For those being transferred, the wait went from 3.9 hours for medical/surgical patients to 21.5 hours for those with mental illness.

“While the notion of mental health parity has received some attention in recent years, the inequity of care for this particularly vulnerable group of patients persists,” Pearlmutter said. “Support for community based initiatives offering mental health resources to patients is urgently needed.”

The wait for mental health services and sobriety

There’s a chronic shortage of beds for people like Kenny and Kyle Moniz in the local area.

SSTAR has 20 beds in its detox unit, 16 for people with a dual diagnosis (mental illness and drugs or alcohol), and 32 in step-down.

SSTAR COO Patricia Emsellem said they are currently looking for a location where they can double their space.

For now, SSTAR tries to “triage” its cases when there’s no room in its program or those in New Bedford or other areas of Massachusetts. It offers a day program and a recovery coach to keep people “safe” until space is available.

A high number of patients at intake to SSTAR, 49 percent, are homeless.

SSTAR attempts to locate housing for the majority of its patients before they are discharged. About 16 percent remain homeless at the end of treatment.

For Kenny, the prospect of homelessness lurks constantly. He said he doesn’t want to wander the streets looking for food, looking for drugs, and looking for shelter again.

“I’m not a spring chicken,” Kenny said.

He’s on medication now and feels better.

He’s hoping to re-start a painting business that ended when he lost his apartment and sold his truck some time back, and hoping as hard as he can that this will be the time that sobriety sticks.

“I know there’s a better life for me,” Kenny said. “I pray on it. I’m committed to what I’m trying to do.”

Email Deborah Allard at dallard@heraldnews.com

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